


Of earth, of ardor

by misslonelyhearts



Series: Kink in the Armor [3]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Desire Demon - Freeform, Dream Sex, M/M, Post DA2, Templar Carver Hawke, Templars, The Fade, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 21:23:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2362607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the fifth entry, and my third story, for the Kink in the Armor writing relay was: forged by flame, shattered in dreams, post DA2 carver and cullen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. O little root of a dream

Cullen knew, and maybe Carver too, that cursed men didn’t always dance while the world burned.  
  
And so they dressed for battle each grim day in Kirkwall’s ashes.  Among their templar brothers and sisters, identical in steel and grey vigilance, they scrounged for what remained of order.  They didn’t hope for what remained in themselves.    
  
The slums bore deep-set scars from the city’s conflict, and the denizens of Darktown drank heavily from the bitter wellspring there.  Cullen commanded a hunt.  Armored shoulders delved down and down, into hiding places that grew large in the bleeding shadows.  In pursuit of demons, Carver followed.  He marched familiar trails, and they carried him through old stories he’d never been allowed to tell.  There he was supposed to dig out the infection.  
  
She was called Hanker, and wouldn’t be beaten away from her claim like some cowhearted fleshbag.  Cullen called Andraste’s name, and the sound of it was the hiss of a sword and sheath.  Carver thought of his mabari’s smile, the gleam of teeth bared in love, and he clenched his aching jaw.  
  
In the moment of falling together at her feet, heaped on the Darktown sludge in forcible sleep, they didn’t know how close in thought they were.  They didn’t know that their grime-slick lashes drew down as the same question, one of no consequence, scuttled across their minds: _Had the Maker given them names, or did demons choose their own?_


	2. You hold me here

i. _carver_  
  
bethany.  had probably loved this part.   
carver. found the fade about as lovely as a blood tick.  
  
the world had never been good enough for her, but it owned him completely.  his waking wasn’t real but he accepted it.  he lurched naked from his bed, from his lothering bed with its stitches and lumps, and took in the empty house around him.    
  
it was small, or he was overlarge, and everything lay quiet and disused.  father’s grimoire burnt in the fireplace.  bethany’s staff broken and covered in spiderwebs. dog hair matted in the rug.  from the yard came mother’s tuneless humming.  carver hurried for the door.  
  
but it was all yellow and empty calmness outside.  a breeze tousled the long grass, and the clothes on the line, and not a single person existed there as far as he could tell. up on the hill, the windmill turned, adding its interminable creaking to the shush of wind. carver’s skin prickled as he turned to see a black cloud of smoke pluming up over the chantry.  
  
from the clothesline he took his brother’s breeches, too short and tight, and ran barefoot to town.  
  
  
ii. _cullen_  
  
whatever force powered the fade could not replicate the smell of ferelden.  the shabby country chantry, yes.  the hot crackle of torchfire, yes. even the poor gilt on the statues of andraste. but cullen smelled no loam, no chaff dust, and no dog.  his own sweat smelled like nothing.  
  
and he did sweat.  he was molten with it, under his old recruit’s armor.  all around him the chantry’s banners burned, and the pews, rivers of blood-red candle wax ran along the floorboards.  a place he’d never been in a world that wasn’t real burbled and groaned with flame, and cullen stood in its center like an offering no one had asked for.  
  
he was content to stand there until the illusion ended.  until the demon showed itself.  
  
when he reached for his blade he found it wooden.  a practice sword, one with notches for every strike learned the hard way.  the tip caught fire against a blazing bookcase, and cullen held it out before him as it burned.    
  
he’d known the fade to be horrible, insidious, inescapably enormous.  he’d forgotten how laughably literal it was.  
  
the doors behind him burst open and the intruder found cullen like that: faith on fire. a flaming sword. a madman laughing at a flaming sword.  
  
carver barrelled through the smoke and gripped cullen’s arm.  a solid man.  not a phantom.  a fereldan like him.  and there, the smell of dog and sun-dried laundry.  
  
‘are you mad? you’ve got to get out of here!’  
  
cullen nodded. ‘yes,’ he said.  
  
  
iii. _carver_  
  
inside dane’s refuge, he found weapons.  carver took the longsword and handed cullen a wickedly curved hatchet.  there were no breastplates or boots, not even a tunic, in any of the rooms.  that’s how he knew the whole mess was his.  after ostagar, after the dragon and the stinking cattle-hold of gwaren, they’d had to sell his armor for passage.  
  
he led cullen through the back of the tavern, out into the fade’s cheerless yellow country.  
  
‘i must have been here before,’ cullen murmured, ‘or i couldn’t be here now.’  
  
carver sighed. barlin’s shed stood there with its knotty planks, stuffed to the rafters with barrels of awful beer.   
  
‘it’s my dream, not yours,’ he said stiffly.  
  
‘you’re sure of that are you, knight-corporal?’  cullen gripped his hatchet and skirted the side of the shed.  
  
‘i am.’ carver came around cullen’s right when he stopped short.  ‘hello peaches.’  
  
she hopped down from a barrel, dirty feet and a wet smile, and carver had always liked her small teeth, like little pearls.  she held his eyes, her skirt high, blouse open, so that he forgot he was too old to be like this.  
  
‘long time no see, love. come for second helpings, have you?’  she said to carver, who was twenty five down to eighteen.  he stopped breathing when she put a hand on his bare chest and licked her lips. ‘by the looks of it, you never miss em.’  
  
he would have.  he’d have liked to.  just once, to see.  the peaches who wasn’t peaches and wanted carver better than he remembered.  but cullen stuck his hatchet up under her chin.   
  
‘stand back, demon.’  
  
‘wait, no,’ carver said quickly.  he put a hand on the haft and looked down into her eyes.  they were yellow, too.  ‘she might help us.’  
  
cullen seethed.  he held the hatchet firm to her neck and said, ‘we’ll not strike any bargains with-’  
  
peaches went shifty, liquid and smoke writhing under her skin until she was someone else entirely. to carver she looked a little like bethany, darker and sadder.  the woman in mage robes turned on cullen so his blade sliced away the fabric at her neck.  
  
‘mmm, _you_. . .liked me better before, like this,’ she said. blood bloomed along her collarbone, staining the robe. cullen stepped back like a startled doe. the woman shifted again, whispering, ‘and like this.’   
  
cullen stepped back again. carver recognized warden armor, at least, if he recognized nothing else about the whole scene that’d been stolen from him.   
  
when she reached out, cullen went to his knees, his hatchet dropped, and carver rolled his eyes.  
  
‘that’s perfect,’ he bit out.  ‘can’t even have a proper temptation to myself.’  
  
he hefted his sword and ran her through.    
  
  
iv. _cullen_  
  
the portal stood at the end of the village’s broken bridge.   _lothering_ , carver reminded him.   
  
cullen was reminded, too, that he’d passed through once, gotten his blessing and went on his way. that had been before. . .many things.  carver asked incessantly about the woman.  cullen told him as much as he cared to, and learned more than he’d wanted about a family he’d never considered.  
  
after they climbed down the dry riverbed and up the other side, the demon appeared again.  she offered again.  the portal glimmered behind her, a deep impossible violet.  
  
cullen thought of his lifeless body. carver’s body, armored instead of barely dressed. and the recruits.  all of them face-down and dying in some darktown sewer.  
  
carver refused at first, but deferred to his commander.  
  
‘my terms are fair and victimless,’ the demon said. ‘you won’t find better in this place.’  
  
cullen stared at carver’s features too long.  he knew that.  carver reddened under cullen’s gaze, barefoot, taller still than his commander, no longer exactly young, but just as tense as ever.  
  
‘she was your cousin,’ said cullen, and his voice was a pile of ash.  the demon smiled, waiting.  
  
‘a big hero, too,’ carver replied, looking at his sword. ‘i didn’t know her.’  
  
cullen tossed his pointless weapon over the side of the bridge.  they’d fallen in with nothing and would leave with the same.  he said, ‘is it strange that i see the resemblance?’  
  
‘everything about this is bloody strange.’  
  
‘agreed,’ he said to to carver’s hard-set jaw, to the demon, and to the violet haze that went green under her power.  
  
they made their bargain uneasily, but cullen touched the portal with a steady hand.


	3. Undermined by blood

They were afraid to dream.  That was Hanker’s confidence, and her price.   
  
In the end she would wait three days, which was nothing, not even half a breath, before exhaustion carried the two men to their paying place.  So infused by pitiful mortal resolve, the liquor of desire, of dreams, was made sweeter.  
  
Three days passed, during which Cullen sat up with his books and his half-burned parchments, rescued from the Chantry rubble. Seventy-two hours of eating little and drinking less, even when there was ale, delivered from the mainland to greedy and grateful templars.   
  
Three days passed during which Carver took every short shift and most of the long, stalking down the halls on thighs that burned from overwork and stubborn practice.  Seventy-two hours of staring glassy-eyed into empty mage quarters, and emptier message boxes.  
  
Lyrium didn’t abide three days.  Neither did war.  But it sat in their pockets all the same, it came banging down the door.  
  
Carver fell asleep in the Gallows mess, curled around his travel-worn hero novel and a bowl of stew.  He rested his head on the crook of his arm, watching the candle burn down, hypnotised by the middling low orange and calm yellow of it.  
  
Cullen fell asleep in his quarters because he wanted to.  He was accustomed to surrender in some forms, luxuriated in the freedom it allowed, and his own bed was safe enough for what might come.


	4. No longer visible to anyone

i. _carver_  
  
isabela would have cheered to see him like this.   he’d almost forgotten that she was long gone.  his dreams since the fall of the city featured no family, no drinks to varric’s tales, no heroes and no legacy.  just a war and a demon’s bargain. hanker thought he was attached.  to love, to peaches, to lothering, to the blighted _cause_.  but all those strings were well and truly snapped.  she couldn’t know how dumb it was, how underwhelming.  to want a dream from him, of all people.    
  
carver had only dreams of fighting left in him. and indifferent fucking.   
  
he stood triumphant in the training yard among warriors, stripped to the waist and laughing with a sword in his hand. sprawled on a table in the hanged man, carver was too drunk to care who sat on his cock next. who came on him after.  
  
the familiar scenery changed. gallows. tavern. back again. a blur of tits and muscle. straw and sweat. breath by ragged breath it shifted.  but he didn’t change.  carver’s dream, his body there, was a riot of broad men, proud of their grip callouses, and sun-freckled women with tongues like deepstalkers.  
  
splayed. grunting. stretched. plunging. bleary and sore and bruised and spent. he was all of it and a gallon of tasteless ale.   
  
carver dreamed of glory and filth in heaping mouthfuls. but when it all fell away, like fantasies did, he got up from the sawdust and was again alone. but the dream went on.   
  
he stumbled through the hanged man, past the rooms that rippled with moans and snoring, to corff’s cistern out back.  there it was quiet. sun slanted down the high mud walls. calm as a chantry. after his orgiastic beginning, the back-alley niche was more peaceful than any kirkwall crevice had a right to be. even in dreams. carver hadn’t expected that.  there was even a dog barking somewhere in lowtown.   
  
he opened the spigot and undressed while the bucket filled up.  the water from the sun-soaked cistern was warm.  he bent for the bucket but another hand reached it first, and turned off the water. carver flinched back.  
  
he’d come from nowhere.   
  
no. he’d come from ferelden. and wore simple clothes that carver hadn’t seen in years.  homespun shirtsleeves rolled back to the elbow, a hairy v at the neck, low-waisted hunter’s trousers.    
  
‘let me,’ said cullen, like it was all the rage to lift up a bucket. ‘i think i’m supposed to.’  
  
carver had never been small enough to shrink into the shadows. never smart enough, either.  he didn’t cover himself now.   
  
‘yeah?’ he said, ‘you’re sure of that are you, knight-captain?’  
  
his commander’s smile was too uncomfortably smart-assed to be a demon’s.  
  
‘i doubt i would be here otherwise.’  cullen’s eyelashes dipped as he looked carver over.  his voice, too, went as deep as carver had ever heard. ‘it’s your dream.’  
  
carver snorted and looked up to the sliver of blue sky overhead.  
  
‘none of it ever was,’ he replied.  cullen stood there, bucket hugged to his chest.  giving the water no chance to cool when he flushed so hotly around it. carver turned, showing cullen his back, and said, ‘go on then.’  
  
carver stared at the wall while water splashed over his head in a steady pour. down to his shoulders. running for his elbows and catching the hairs. the sawdust and reek washed from his chest to his belly to his knees. looking down, he saw it pooling at his feet.  water dripped in his eyes.  his smalls were drenched and clinging, and the clay wall darkened where it’d been splashed.    
  
cullen was quiet. intense. shadowy over carver’s shoulder. he breathed deeply and poured, emptied, until it was all gone. metal clanged. carver heard the spigot squeak open.  the bucket filled again. crisp and clear. imminent.    
  
when he turned, pushing hair out of his face, carver found cullen shucking his shirt. yanking at the buttons. eyes darting from the ground to parts of carver that were more northerly. carver hadn’t known it was possible. that a man could be stoic and frantic all at once. amused, he stopped himself from reaching out to help.  instead he listened to the water, and watched cullen’s hands work mechanically on his laces. a solid cock curved just under them.  
  
it was weird, of course. his dream would be like this, of course. and maybe cullen knew that some flavors of weirdness made him hard, too.  being alone, and not.  having a quiet space. a little turmoil and some degradation.  carver reached down and shut off the spigot.  
  
‘what now?’  he sucked water from his lip. cullen looked up from his laces.    
  
through his wet smallclothes, carver stroked himself.  and smirked.   
  
cullen came forward, chest to wet chest, a confused authoritarian with no charges, and no air left for the niceties. and carver still had use for one, but not the other.  he was always good for a dare, though.  cullen gripped the back of carver’s slick hair.   
  
‘turn around.’  
  
he was propelled.  by his own curiosity, some nervous laughter, and a portion of cullen’s consistently misapplied force. but it was perfect. for carver. the way he hit the wall, the squelch of his bare toes in the puddle. how the clay smelled in his nose. he was drowned clean again, still chuckling. with warm water, and cullen’s heaviness at his back.  stiff heat sticky against his ass, boots bookending his bare feet.    
  
the bucket rolled away noisily and hit the opposite wall. then it was quiet again in the alley.  
  
carver’s forehead lolled.  he said, ‘fuck me,’ to curse everything that had ever gone tits up for him. and to invite. he put out his left hand, flat on the damp clay wall.  cullen pressed up behind him, thumbs and fingers hooking under the waist of carver’s smalls, pulling, scraping them down.    
  
he forgot to keep laughing.  at cullen. at their life.  he forgot peaches and demons and his lonely little slice of misery.  carver closed his eyes, stroked and pushed back.  cullen’s arm circled around his chest, a clamp that latched from rib to shoulder.   
  
‘like this?’ cullen murmured, menace and solidarity huffed into the back of carver’s ear. a rough hand took his hip. mute, carver nodded against the wall.   
  
at the first thick slide of cullen’s cock, not even inside him, just a warning and a tease sawing lewdly in the cleft of his soaked ass, carver remembered that he was _still real_.  if he remembered nothing else.  
  
  
ii. _cullen_  
  
the hunting cabin. had been a fantasy.  cullen had conjured it over decades of dream-filled nights as a child, as a man.  bygone charm.  isolated refuge. sometimes the details were incomplete, muddy as his homeland, but there was always snow.  and he was never alone there.  
  
it appeared at the juncture of two high mountain slopes, warm light in the windows, a tall black forest like a cloak all around. wolf-howls in the snowfall.  
  
he pushed on. heaving his legs through the deep drifts. someone waited for him inside. inside there was another soul, a fire, and a hundred soft pelts because death could be that, too. soft, accepting, natural.  cullen pulled open the clasps of his coat, ten more steps, and tilted his head back to see the stars, five more steps, and smelled woodsmoke like holy incense.   
  
at the door he didn’t pause.  it belonged to him.    
  
beyond the threshold, beside the hearth, sat a black-haired man that cullen had only half expected. no longer young, not yet old, he wore breeches that were too small and a practiced scowl.  
  
‘what am i doing here?’ he said to cullen.  
  
‘whatever you like,’ cullen replied. he shut the door against the wind and shrugged off his fur-lined coat. ‘that has always been the purpose of this. . .place.  for me, anyway.’  
  
carver stood.  ‘you come here, to the middle of bloody nowhere in the bitter cold, to do what you _like_?’  
  
the cabin had been host to his unutterable desires.  on the floor in front of the fire. in the wide leather chair.  the bed full of furs.  but now, with carver’s considerable presence, cullen couldn’t remember if it’d ever felt quite so small before.  if it’d housed two men. grown and groaning. pitiful.  it must have.   
  
‘for as long as it lasts, yes.’ cullen nodded and pulled off his gloves.   
  
‘you make it count, then, is that it?’ said carver, and stuck his hands casually just inside the waist of his breeches.  
  
it felt like a joke at cullen’s expense. but it wasn’t.  ‘i try.’  
  
carver laughed, easy as a dog barking at play.    
  
‘oh, i’ll bet you do.  all alone with your imagination, no blighted reality to muck it up,’ he said, glancing around. but finding no additional fodder for his scorn among the stone walls and simple furnishings, his smile faltered.  hopeful eyes, softer ones, settled on cullen’s frame. ‘seems to work for you.’  
  
‘i’m not alone,’ replied cullen.  
  
‘no, i guess not.’  he was less than sullen, for once.  but not fully at ease, even in dreams.  but he was there. with a heavy step, and another, carver closed the distance.  
  
smiling sideways, he took up cullen’s snow-chilled hand, warmed it with breath, and applied some vigorous rubbing.  like serious work.  like care.  then, he guided cullen’s hand down his chest, along the twist of hair and dip of his navel, down to his groin.    
  
cullen held him.  carver held his breath.    
  
when cullen reached for a kiss, it was accepted. carver’s mouth. just for him.    
  
it lengthened, deepened. the kiss and the stroke. cullen meted out his pressure, tongue and teeth, lip to lip, curled palm. firm making firm. they kissed until carver moaned, dropping his head to watch. kiss-raw lips slack, black lashes downcast. to watch cullen’s hand working. he slid three buttons free. skin on skin. and carver bucked in his hand.   
  
‘maker’s breath,’ carver said, as if he had none of his own.    
  
cullen cupped his bowed head, inhaled the dog smell and sun-dried laundry. his busy hand curled round and up, and carver’s hoarse panting went with it.   
  
‘undress me?’ said cullen.  
  
‘do it yourself,’ said carver, and stopped the progress cullen had made between his legs.  
  
gutted. hot as outrage and wanting, cullen did as he was told.  jacket. fine shirt. boots. carver stood silhouetted, blocking the fire in the hearth. watching all the time. touching himself, whatever, wherever he liked.  and he never lost that intractable smirk.  
  
he curled an arm around cullen’s bare shoulders, leaned in, hips leading. dragging so that cullen held on for the contact. never less alone than now. in just a few inches of boyish rubbing, matched shapes, along a shared path.  
  
carver pushed cullen back. pushed him with a kiss and a greedy handful of cocks. pushed him. two steps. knuckles brushing the fine, low-reaching hair. a tender tug on his balls. backed him into a mindless retreat that was no demon’s favor. no partner or antagonist he’d ever been clever enough to dream up on his own.  cullen’s legs met the leather chair beside the hearth, and he went down.  
  
fighting not to sprawl in the deep chair, cullen leaned forward for position. for carver’s looming body. proud. a hand directing his full cock and another tilting cullen’s jaw up, forward. middle finger rubbing lightly in the hollow behind cullen’s ear.  
  
carver‘s voice. it was rich and warm as lamp-oil when he said. . .he said and would always say in this place from now on. . .  
  
‘want to know if all amells taste the same?’    
  
it could easily live with cullen, in the dark, forever.  he’d never be rid of the sound. the word or deed.  
  
‘regrettably, yes’  cullen sighed.  his hands.  they’d been climbing the backs of carver’s thighs.  but he dropped them.   
  
‘the point of it is having no regrets,’ carver said, exasperated. he bent a little to force cullen’s eyes upward. ‘right?’   
  
when cullen finally nodded, an unbelieving ‘yes’ whispered to his personal blasphemy, carver pushed.   
  
he moved between cullen’s legs and said, ‘then get to it.’  
  
cullen licked his lips.  



	5. Property of death

Carver woke with a hand jammed into the front of his trousers and his face stuck to the table.  He was damp, the fabric around his belly as wet as if he’d pissed himself.  And he remained hard in his own tacky palm.  The longtable nearly flipped on its side as he shoved away from it, tumbling himself onto the mess floor with a jaw-jolting thud.  
  
“Son of a bitch,” he groaned.  Beside him on the ground lay the overturned hero novel.  Carver rolled to his knees, scooped up the book, and stood.  
  
Years of walking along behind his brother’s crew had taught him enough colorful cursing to encompass a fraction of what he’d just dreamed.  Looking to the table, he saw the candle had melted all the way down, the stew congealed to brown paste in the cold mess hall.  
  
Carver shivered.  He touched himself and groaned.  Then, gripping the old book for its safe realness, he bolted from the mess and ran for the Knights’ quarters.  
  
  
  
  
Cullen woke stiff enough to pound nails, on his stomach, dragging himself across a wet spot in the sheets.  His room was chilled, the fire in the chimney long dead.   
  
Wherever Carver was in the Gallows, there was time to make a new fire, if nothing else.  The thread was loose enough to allow for a mundane chore, but it would tighten.  It would draw them together sooner rather than later. There was no point in avoiding it as they’d tried to avoid sleep in the first place.  
  
Cullen chucked fresh logs into the chimney and waited.  While the first coy flames grew bolder around the firewood he waited, sitting on the bed with the sheet drawn over his lap.  He didn’t dress, too bewildered and groggy.  
  
Clumsy footfalls clamored in the hallway.  
  
As he had in the Fade, in the false and flaming Chantry, Carver barreled through the door.  Cullen had expected certain details: the half-wild confusion, the obvious bulge, the bodily momentum pulled up short by reality.    
  
He hadn’t expected the book.    
  
Seeing the direction of Cullen’s gaze, Carver first held the book over his groin. But there it beckoned even greater inspection, and Carver uttered a short, pained wailing sound before dropping the book like it had grown fangs.  
  
“Knight-Corporal,” said Cullen, adding a weary exhale.  He rubbed his eyes.  
  
“Don’t give me that,” Carver said.  He slammed the door and wheeled on Cullen with a purpose. But he struggled with a bumbling knot of words.  “Look. We need a chat. This is, this isn’t what I thought.  I’m sure that you don’t-”  
  
Cullen held up a hand.  
  
“It’s done. The demon’s bargain is complete, I think,” he said. “Put it behind you.  Bury it somewhere deep and roll a stone on top of it.”  
  
Unconvinced, Carver glared, his jaw grinding visibly.  They stared each other down. It was difficult for Cullen, who remained seated and conspicuously naked except for his sheet. But it wasn’t impossible to be intimidating from that position. Carver’s scowl deepened.  
  
“Balls to that,” he said.  He gestured to the floor in front of him. “Stand up, come on then.”  
  
Cullen considered exercising the privilege of his rank, but it lacked the gravity to win this particular argument.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
He got up on his feet, ankles cracking, and stood before Carver Hawke as Carver had once stood before him to receive his Knight sash.  In a better circumstance, a romantic one (if such a thing still existed), it might have been a warm moment, a proud presentation. But they didn’t have better circumstances any longer.  Cullen’s expectant silence was outmatched only by his flushed, unavoidable cock.  
  
“Ah, see? You’ve got one, too,” said Carver, pleased to have uncovered a mystery that no one cared about.  
  
“Yes, it appears so,” said Cullen.  
  
Carver huffed and grinned down at the plain evidence while Cullen waited. The triumph was brief and unsatisfying, though, and after a moment Carver crossed his arms.  Troubled eyes met Cullen’s, and he was disappointed that they hadn’t lingered a while longer on the rest of him.  
  
“Is it supposed to mean something?” Carver said. “Seeing each other’s dreams, the lot of it?”  
  
The memory of having done far more than _observe_ hauled its vivid weight between Carver’s words, but Cullen decided against mentioning it.  
  
“Yes,” he replied. “In my experience it usually does.”  He scrubbed his hands through his hair and turned around to grab his trousers.  They hung on the back of the chair by the fire.  “But just because it has _meaning_ doesn’t make it _matter_.”  He dragged the trousers up his legs, tenderly settling them over his crotch.  
  
Carver stepped back.  He gnawed his lip for a moment, watching Cullen’s hands on the trouser buttons.  And then, inspecting the downturned face of his commander, Carver hooted and chuckled, as if he’d found a stash of contraband.  He said, “What a bloody marvelous tit you are.  What a waste.”  
  
Cullen looked up.  “I beg your pardon.”  
  
“It doesn’t _matter_ because you think we’re all going to die anyway.”  He spread his hands, waiting, and Cullen could only be silent while he pushed the smooth buttons into their slots.  It was all the assent Carver needed in order to turn insufferable.  “Right. Well, you can stuff that.”  
  
“Take your leave, Knight-Corporal,” Cullen warned. “This discussion is ov-”  
  
Carver kissed him quiet, always the daring one, stuck in a headlong run. It was brief and dry and after they separated Carver looked him dead in the eye to say, “Thought it was worth checking.  Just to see, you know, since it doesn’t really _matter_.”  
  
Before Cullen could agree, disagree, or call it moot, Carver did it again.  He leaned across the scant space for another, more thoughtful kiss.  He was, Cullen decided, more like the man his body proclaimed him to be, instead of the boy who seemed to live permanently on the tip of his tongue.  
  
They didn’t touch except for their lips, at first.  Cullen opened his mouth and pushed back, giving Carver his tongue and taking, tasting, a little for himself.  So urged, Carver leaned into him, raising a slow hand to Cullen’s face.  The scope of the kiss widened to include the nipping of plush lips with careful teeth, a day’s stubble at war with a clean shave, and a palmful of Carver’s unkempt hair, clutched lightly in Cullen’s fingers.  
  
“Want to get to it, then?” Cullen murmured, his voice gravelly in Carver’s flushed ear.  
  
“A sword-fight with the Captain?” said Carver, with a wink and an eager nod. “Yes, please.”  
  
The trousers spent, in total, less than a handful of minutes on Cullen’s body. They joined Carver’s book somewhere in the corner.  Whisking back the sheet, Carver joked about the wet spot in the bed.  Taking hold of Carver’s waistband, Cullen countered by observing his.  They would be wet again anyway, and soon.  
  
Cullen was a quiet fuck, damnably attached to his gravitas.  Carver liked punctuating his moves by cursing the Maker’s every imaginary orifice.  They were unprepared, halting, adaptable, and quick to come.  But they agreed that, of all the blighted things, it didn’t matter.


	6. Curve a face that there may be speech

Carver slept dreamlessly.  The too-small bed and intimate sprawl of limbs took him down to a deeply humble sense-memory.  It was closeness, and the poverty of a cursed life that smelled of dirty bodies, sickness, cut straw, lyrium. . .and a small but powerful joy.  
  
He enjoyed himself in the messy ways, and the traditional ones, too. Chipping out a little happiness in the chaos was a Hawke imperative, templar or not.  In his limited estimation, that kind of freedom _mattered_ , even if they ended up losing everything to a bleeding apocalypse.    
  
Carver dropped into sultry black sleep beside a snoring, but sort of handsome, version of the alternative.  
  
  
  
  
For a long time Cullen sat before the fire in his room.  At some point he’d picked up Carver’s forgotten book and flipped through it.  The writing was exceedingly terrible, just awful rot, and Cullen couldn’t put it down.  
  
Parts of him were cold, but he didn’t dress, didn’t go back to bed.  His numbness was special to him, or was meant to be. The longer he sat, the warmer he became, and the warmth fed into his blood where it gained a foothold somewhere in his chest.  A demon had done that, in a roundabout way.  Spirits knew fuckall about short lives and real pain, but they excelled in showing him how to _live_ when his own efforts failed outrageously.    
  
If he dreamed of that place again, if he wished it real and the company too, the Maker might forgive him for it.  
  
The sheets rustled in some closer place, though no less lost, and Cullen started at the sound.  He glanced back to see Carver, exactly as he’d left him:  Nude, brave, irascible, and too bulky to share the bed.  
  
“I’d almost forgotten you were here,” said Cullen.   
  
Carver snorted, and rolled his head on the pillow. He laid an arm across his face, muttering not unhappily, “Now it feels like home.”  
  
“Home?”  
  
“Nevermind.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 'O little root of a dream' poem by Paul Celan


End file.
